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Evaluation of FGDC's NSDI Grants Program

September, 2001

Executive Summary

This report describes the results of a postal survey of organizations that
applied for FGDC metadata clearinghouse grants over the period 1994- 1999. The
main goal of the survey was to evaluate the effectiveness of FGDC's grants program.
A further goal was to compare the characteristics of successful versus unsuccessful
applicants, as well as non-applicants. Key findings include the following:

Among successful grant applicants:

95% indicated that the FGDC grants program had contributed significantly
to the success of their metadata projects.

approximately half of the organizations that were denied FGDC funding proceeded
with some variant of their original proposal.

because of their limited in-house resources (GIS expertise), unsuccessful
applicants were more likely to seek outside help from professionals in other
organizations, including private consultants, academics, and other collaborators.

most of the unsuccessful applicants intend to apply for FGDC support in
the future

Overall, the picture that emerged from our analysis can be summarized as follows.
First, FGDC grants contribute significantly to the development of metadata clearinghouses
among successful applicants. The existence of a critical mass of in-house GIS
specialists appears to be the chief discriminator between successful versus
unsuccessful applicants. Second, projects that were supported by FGDC were in
most cases associated with spillovers to other organizations (demonstration
effects). In addition, virtually all of these projects have been supported by
post-grant investment from within the recipient organization itself. Third,
FGDC grants have improved the in-house technical capacity (or broadened the
range of in-house activities) of many of the grant recipients. Fourth, all of
the successful applicants have created metadata clearinghouses. A substantial
majority of the successful applicants ranked the importance of FGDC support
either highly or very highly. Finally, the main reason that eligible non-applicants
failed to submit proposals was that they were unaware of the existence of FGDC
grants.